GM and the Red Cars

The claim is often made that a conspiracy of General
Motors, Standard Oil, Firestone Tires, et al
killed off a thriving rail mass-transit system in Los Angeles.

This is a myth.

A brief version of why this is a myth is contained in a
letter to the editor
I wrote that was published in the Los Angeles Times. Read on for
the full story.

The current incarnation of this story dates to 1974,
when Bradford Snell, a government attorney, testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee that
General Motors and others had conspired to buy up and dismantle streetcar systems throughout the
United States. He even claimed that they were convicted of "criminal
conspiracy to monopolize ground transportation" in case No. 186 F2d
562, 1949. As we shall see, there was in fact such
a court case, and GM, et al were convicted on one of
the two counts in the case, but the bit about monopolizing
transportation is a myth.

This story got another big boost in 1988, when it formed part of the story in the movie "Who
Framed Roger Rabbit?" In this telling, the evil character Doom reveals that he bought the
Red Car system so that he could dismantle it to force people to drive on his new freeway.

Another telling of this story was in a 1996 independent film titled "Taken For a
Ride", which was shown on the PBS series "POV". This film made extensive
use of Bradford Snell, and basically presented his opinion as established
truth.

This story has become so entrenched that it is accepted as fact by
many people in Los Angeles. Problem
is, it's just not true.

There is a grain of truth contained in it: National City Lines, a
subsidiary of General Motors, did buy the Los
Angeles Railway [LARY] in 1944. They did replace some streetcar lines
with buses, but the introduction of buses in the LARY had begun in 1930. But
the real genesis of the myth was the above-mentioned court case in 1947.
General Motors and
its subsidiary, National City Lines, along with seven other corporations were indicted
on two counts under the Sherman Antitrust Act. They were charged with:

Conspiring to acquire control of a number of transit companies, forming a transportation monpoly;

Conspiring to monopolize sales of buses and supplies to companies owned by National City Lines.

The defendents were aquitted on the first count. General Motors was convicted on the second
count: "to monopolize the
sale of supplies used by the local transportation companies controlled
by the City Lines defendants."
Which is to say, they were convicted of conspiring to have
the GM-owned transit companies only buy GM buses. While
this may be ethically questionable, it's pretty understandable, and
it's nowhere near "criminal conspiracy to monopolize ground
transportation."

Note that nowhere in this case was there
any mention of a conspiracy to replace streetcars
with buses.
Nor was there `conspiracy to monopolize ground transportation.' The
first count comes close to this, but they were aquitted on this one.
The replacement of streetcars with buses had actually been under way
for several years. At the time, buses were
seen as being more `modern' than streetcars, as well as being cheaper to run,
quieter, and safer. Also, since buses do not run on fixed tracks, routes can
be adjusted at will, and can be easily extended into new developments, which
was a major concern in a rapidly-growing city like Los Angeles.
The main point of this is that the
streetcar companies were converting to buses anyway, and GM just wanted to
make sure they bought GM buses.

It was this case that Bradford
Snell fundamentally misunderstood, and formed the basis for his Conspiracy Theory.
As
Sy Adler, a professor of urban studies who has researched this story
says, "Everything Bradford Snell wrote...about transit in Los Angeles was
wrong."

The actual facts in the matter are that ridership on the Pacific Electric and
LARY peaked in 1920. After that, ridership fell consistently over the years, with
the only increase coming during the early 1940s, when wartime gasoline rationing forced
people out of their cars. At the same time, the people of Los Angeles were becoming
increasingly dissatisfied with the poor service and overcrowding on the streetcars,
which led to the Major Street Traffic Plan of 1924. This was approved by the voters,
and provided for money to widen and improve the main streets thoughout the city.
This was a popular measure because the automobile was seen as a way for ordinary
people to have an alternative to the streetcars.

Another inconvenient fact for the conspiracy theorists is that the
Pacific Electric (Red Cars) was never owned
by National City Lines. It was owned by the Southern Pacific Railroad until
1953, when it was sold to Metropolitan Coach Lines. In 1957, it was sold to
the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transit Authority, which presided over the final
dismantling of the line in 1961. Also remember that the Pacific Electric
was not really a profit-making enterprise in itself. It largely came into
existance in order to help Henry Huntington make money on real estate. The
Red Cars existed in order to allow new subdivisions to be built on the
outskirts of Los Angeles. Once the houses were sold, the railroad was
just an albatross as far as the developers were concerned. This was the
origin of the poor service and overcrowding that led to people being
unhappy with the streetcars.

This story persists largely because of the natural human tendency to
yearn for `the good old days', which are largely a figment of our
collective imaginations. There are a lot of people who think that
the dismantling of the old rail systems was a mistake, and it is
much more comfortable to believe that some monolithic `they' did
it, rather than to face the fact that it was the result of the
individual decisions of thousands of people who chose to use
their cars.